


Interlude

by Lararaider7



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Battle of Hogwarts, F/M, Romance, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 20:03:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7947217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lararaider7/pseuds/Lararaider7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes in the chaos is where you reveal the most. One-shot. PG-13</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer - I own nothing of Harry Potter. 
> 
> First Fic. Feedback will forever be appreciated. Hope you like it!

“Arraigo!”

A chorus of creaking sounds erupted in unison and Hermione sprinted. Everything was moving, like the ground was being tipped on its side and gravity was betraying her at the worst of times, but without it actually happening. Instantly she started throwing blocking and diversion charms, hoping to avoid everything that was coming in her path. Something hard and sharp collided with her shin, maybe a part of an incoming chair or a leg of a desk, and she let out a bark of pain as she ran to the other end of the room as more furniture was moving towards her. That freaking hurt. And then a broom, dragging cobwebs through the air stabbed at her, directly in her left shoulder and she almost turned with the force of it. 

The man kept howling and laughing. Big, open-mouthed laughs that rang across the whole room. They were almost louder than the crashes behind her. Everything that he had conjured to move was colliding around the bookcases behind him. Some were bouncing back as they reached his powerful shield. 

“Bloquio!”, she yelled, almost getting hit, square in the whole body by a heavy, oak wood desk coming straight at her. It plunged sideways at the last moment, crashing with stonewall. The bottled ink it was carrying didn’t follow along though, and it splashed on her neck and her opened mouth, the bitter scrunching taste forcing coughs out of her breathless lungs. 

At least the first year slytherins had managed to escape. She had found them hunched over the teacher’s desk, plotting some sort of escape route away from the fighting. They didn’t waver when Hermione found them and offered to guard them. Slytherins. Always proud, even so young. She couldn’t have helped them if she wanted to either way, for a Death Eater had found their hushes and whispers at that exact moment and tried to attack her from behind. She could only hope they were alright, so she could thank them for the screams they let out in warning when they saw him.

Now she was looking back at him, the chaos settled when nothing else was left to move. The moment the wobbly tower of wood tumbled closer to him Hermione moved. 

“Stupefy!” “Stupefy!” she screamed. They landed close, almost on his shoulder, almost on his legs, but he was very light and uninjured. She stood on the other end of the room, watching him watching her amongst the clutter. Watching him toying with her. No sooner the curses left her mouth and she had to move again, though, sideways, ducking and jumping his incoming blows. 

“Confundio!” He yelled.

She darted, a sudden push of her feet to the left and she could actually feel the wind of the curse touch her arms. They regarded each other, surveilling. Her face must be hilarious. She can’t hide her panic, no matter how much she wants to. Her mouth sat wide open and constantly breathing in air. His face was covered, but she could feel his eyes on her, ready to pounce the moment her arm lifted. He was quick, her lungs could attest to that, but there was a predictability to his movements. Like the way his left hand tensed when he was about to fire at her. Or how he seemed to go to the right when he could evade an easy curse. 

There was also ruckus outside. Yells and collisions and crashing of curses or other things on walls and then, a big blow from someone she hoped was on her side. And from the edge of her vision she could see bursts of light on the center window of the classroom, remnants of spells cascading down the castle. A delirious rain of rainbows. His head twitched, the slightest bit to the window and she acted. 

“Tremulous!” 

He darted to the right, and the curse flew above him. It looked like a pretty lousy miss, not even close to her caliber. He fired back, but she was prepared to dodge the green light while her curse took effect and the wall of books and portraits collapsed on top of his unsuspecting form. Everything, everything fell down, hiding the man amidst all of it. 

One, two three seconds. One, two three breaths. Her eyes, stretched as wide as she could and didn’t stray from the overgrown pile of books and portraits. She took a tentative step, and another, the shouts overheard pulling her into action. Quickly and decided, she started to cross the room. 

Books shot upwards, suddenly, with no warning and no chance for her to get her bearings nor even prepare herself for the hissed crucio that knocked the wand out of her hand. Instantaneously, a sharp crush like feeling exploded in her spine, burning upwards, and downwards and in and burning her skin from the inside out, reaching every bone, paralyzing and cracking. Her body tensed and her knees found the floor. Her opened mouth let out the cry her shock hadn’t allowed. She couldn’t see anything, although she had her eyes wide open. Just the tightening and untightening of the pain in her limbs atrophying her muscles. Forcing them to clench further than how she could possibly do alone. 

No amount of years of studying unforgivable curses could help Hermione with this pain. She heard the faintest rustle, footsteps and clothes and the blinding pain stopped. It felt like it stopped after ten minutes, though. Too long to get right back up to the fight, so she willed any bit of functional brain matter that was left to focus on breathing. And not close her eyes. There was warmth close to her, one she would have welcomed if it didn’t come from the Death Eater that had just tortured her. 

His hands grabbed at her collar and hauled up sideways close to his face. “How did that feel, bitch? Enjoy that? You want to see the Death Eater who kills Hermione Granger?”

He didn’t wait for a response. And she couldn’t have given it anyways. Her throat had closed. A second later her face was pressed to stubble and bared teeth. She ignored the tremors of revulsion emanating deep within her, his spit on her temple and her face dragging upwards so her eye connected closely with his- brown as hers- and focused on keeping alert.

“Say goodbye to your low life existence, mudblood. This is the begin'--move out, I have this covered. Go and look through the other classrooms.”

She wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t dropped her suddenly on the floor. Her head clicked against it. It hurt but she dared not move. She stared at his face, seeking answers. His voice carried the same hate he gave her to whomever had arrived. Someone was there. Someone else. Another one. She could do against one, but against two and in her state? 'You need your wand- she thought- you need to find your wand and then you have to think and get up and –'

The man’s voice took on a more forceful tone, a slight tremble at the base of his throat. “What are you looking at? I have this covered. Didn’t you hear me? Go fucking-“

There was a quick second where she registered something close to panic before the Death Eaters face illuminated with a stark bright green. Avada Kedabra reached him and it looked as if the curse had become solid because he flew back with such a force, that it seemed like one second he was beside her and the next he was at the end of the room, against piles of books and crashed furnishings, tense and with his body raised and lowered at odd angles, a broken leg from a table protruding from his cooling stomach.

Just like that. She raised up, dazed and pulled by the morbid urge to look at him. She had never killed anyone. She had never heard anybody utter the words against a human being. Her astonished look matched the dead man’s one. Then she hears a clank, something hard dropping and then footsteps coming and as her heart imploded her eyes dart frantically for any sign of her wand before she turns and faces whoevers-

A hand grabbed her shoulder, turning her and Draco Malfoy’s face hovered above her. It takes her a minute to recognize him. And everything in her head confuses itself. Where is she? Was she actually fighting a Death Eater before someone saved her? What is Draco Malfoy doing here? He doesn’t register right, though, which does not help her temporary amnesia at all. His eyes are uncommonly big. His mouth open in a very uncharacteristic way of him. Slack. His exhales crash down on her face forcefully. 

He has blood on his mouth. A swollen lower lip stained with dark mauve on its glistening edge. Her eyes stay a second longer on it before sense finally clicks inside her and she thrusts backward at his reaching arms, the instinct of survival moving her impulses. Not nearly as far as she hoped, though. His hands grab at both sides of her and he pulls up and holds her a head space away from him, his eyes bouncing around her whole body. 

“Where’s your wand?” It’s a whisper, rough and panicky.

It must have taken her too long to answer. His fingers squeeze against her arms. “My wand….” She mutters, looking down around his hands. 

He looks as well and she steals a glance at him, his blonde fringe almost touching her nose. He smells of sweat and smoke. His hands are still tight around her arms. She looks backwards at the dead man behind her. Did he just kill a Death Eater for her? 

When she turns back he seems to have disappeared in the darkened room. Not even the continuous flare of spells outside can illuminate the night for too long. Everything is a mess here, but the slight shine of a mask on the floor grabs her attention. He appears suddenly from his crouch and presses the wand on her hands. She grabs it tightly and feels the tension in her shoulders lessens a bit.

“Someone exploded the lower wing of the castle, I’ve seen stray students go into it. I don’t know where they’re heading, but it’s definitely safer than here.” 

She stares at him, digesting his words and trying to formulate the response he seems to be waiting for. Another sound, higher up erupts around them and close, real close, practically beside them, and they hear tumultuous colliding with the wall. Bricks falling down from a tower, probably. She swallows at the thought of stray students wandering out on the castle grounds.

“Hermione!” She has never heard him call her by her first name. Not once, she thinks. She looks at him, his face resembling something grave. Worry? It’s something close and dear to her but alien coming from him. 

Her response is automatic, but not any less true. “I have to help Harry… Ron… and the others. Malfoy, I’m going back.” She starts moving around him and his livid face but stills-

Hard, splattering footsteps are heard outside. He whips around, pushing her behind him and into his body with his hand, wand ready at his other. Her wand is ready too, but her thoughts are racing on fighting whoever is out there and who is this person in front of her. The steps are continuous and they fade out as fast as they faded in. It takes her a moment to assess the situation, again. 

She moves around now. She’s taking too long. “I’m going back to Harry. Please help the other students Malfoy.”

He stills her by her wrist. “You’re going back to kill yourself, Granger? Listen to me. You help the students. You get out of here. Leave Potter to finish this off on his own.”

It’s surreal, talking to him. Like she’s arguing with a stranger about her life, but both of them know about it. “How can you ask that of me?", she asks, "What are you even doing here? I can’t simply turn my back on my friends!”

“It’s fucking mental, Granger! You just almost died right this minute! And you want to go back for more!?”

“There are people that I love up there! I can’t simply leave them! How could I?!  
I can’t do that! I can’t!”

He looks as if he wants to hit her. Or yell something right in between her eyes, but nothing meaningful or hurtful comes out. 

After a moment, “Please help those students Malfoy. Don’t let them die outside.”

She has to go, she knows it but his eyes keep boring down on hers. And there’s something there. Something she shouldn’t care and does not understand at all. But, just because she’s Hermione, sudden prodding questions erupt out of nowhere, or somewhere in her head as she looks right into his gray eyes. She feels like one of those days in class, where she knew she only has a quick moment to ask the question before the teacher moved on to another chapter. If she missed the chance to ask it then, there wouldn’t be a point in asking it later. She’d have more questions ready. She feels this urge now. To ask him questions that will feel so silly outside of this room.

Suddenly, he lets out a shuddering breath, and her eyes flicker to his swollen lip as he looks down to their shoes. Then, with no preamble, he takes her right hand in his, her wand encased in her fist as he grips it and holds it. He presses it to his chest, hard. 

“Don’t,” He starts, small-voiced and still looking down and Hermione is entranced at this, startled and scared at the same time before he licks his lips and looks up at her. “Don’t die, Granger. You have to live.” 

And she can’t do anything, but stare and nod and feel words and questions overflowing her throat. But it’s not the time to ask them. It passed. 

Draco turns briskly to the door, then. He looks at both ways and turns to the right. 

She feels winded, alone and her heart is beating wildly. It was beating before, but its beating now again and she feels it’s beating differently. She exits the room, her wand gripped tightly in her hand and turns left to the stairs.


End file.
